Major quake shakes Central America

MARCOS ALEMANAssociated Press

Published Sunday, January 14, 2001

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A major earthquake shook Central America on Saturday, cracking buildings, blocking roads and collapsing a hillside that buried dozens of homes. The death toll was uncertain.

A hillside in the middle-class Las Colinas neighborhood west of the capital gave way as the powerful quake hit about 11:35 a.m. Reporters saw at least 10 bodies, apparently dead, pulled from the debris and hundreds of rescuers frantically ripped at the earth with sticks and bare hands to reach those still buried.

''I felt an earthquake and all the hill came down and covered the houses,'' said Candido Salinas, 60, who lives across the street from the slide zone.

Elsewhere in El Salvador and Guatemala, churches collapsed, electricity failed and walls cracked and roads were blocked by landslides.

At least two people were reported killed and four injured in Guatemala. The Red Cross reported at least 10 people injured in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. Landslides had blocked roads, preventing officials from reaching some rural areas.

The magnitude 7.6 earthquake was centered off the Salvadoran coast, about 65 miles southwest of San Miguel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colo.

The temblor caused buildings to sway in Mexico City, about 600 miles to the northwest.

News of the damage was slowed by the fact much of El Salvador's telephone service and electricity was knocked out by the quake.

It took more than an hour for some San Salvador radio stations to return to the air and telephone service remained spotty at mid-afternoon. There were cracked buildings and shattered windows across the city of 500,000.

Officials at San Salvador's international airport said all operations had been halted and damaged buildings there were evacuated.

Most businesses in the city also were closed -- though in a surreal touch, acrobats and dancers from a touring circus marched through the streets past frightened people, using a loudspeaker to promote a coming performance.

Salvadoran Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said some roads were blocked on the edge of the capital, and there were reports of a bus buried by a landslide in Tecolouca, east of San Salvador.

He said there were reports that a centuries-old church had collapsed in Santa Ana, about 35 miles northwest of the capital.

Panicked residents raced from homes and offices in El Salvador and in neighboring Guatemala.

Police there said a man and a 2-year-old girl were killed and three other people were injured when a pair of homes collapsed in the city of Jalpataua.

A construction worker was injured as he fell from a building in Guatemala City, according to the fire department.

Local radios reported the collapse of a church in Suchitepequez, in southern Guatemala.

The quake set off car alarms and temporarily knocked out electricity, radio, television and cellular phone service all over Guatemala, but most service was quickly restored.

Honduran officials reported cracked buildings in several cities, but there were no reports of injuries.